MACKIE — OS FOSSIL BIEDS. 
205 
any more than stoues or pebbles having some sort of similitude to 
parts of birds, such as the ' cock ' of Agricola and the ' hen ' of My- 
lius, imprinted on the schist of lUmenau. Other authors liave also," 
he continues, regarded very gratuitously as Ornitholites some fossil 
bones, merely on account of their liglitness and slenderness, but which 
a very slight examination would suffice to prove those of fish, small 
quadrupeds, and sometimes even to be parts of shells and crusta- 
ceans." 
" Thus the sulcata littoralis rostrata of Luid (Lith. Brit. t. 17) appears 
to me but the extremity of the dentated spine of the fin of some fish. 
The ' beaks ' of the environs of Weimar and Jena, of which Wallerius 
and Linnaeus speak, are only, according to Walch, who has been in that 
country, but superficial resemblances. Eora. Delille, in the Catalogue of 
the Cabinet of Davila, cites a beak from the environs of Eeutlingen (Cat. 
iii. p. 225), which has been adopted by Linnaeus, and a bone from Cron- 
stadt, which appeared to him to be a fowl's ; but his ' beak' seems to be only a 
bivalve shell showing itself obli(]uely at the surface of the stone. If it 
were a true beak, it differed prodigiously from all that we now know of 
existing birds ; and as to the bone, there is neither description nor figure 
in his work. Sclieuclizer speaks (Mus. Dil. p. 106) of a bird's head in a 
black schist of Eisleben ; but he adds immediateh% that ' one might also 
take it for a gillyflower,' — quite sufficient to judge it by. Others (Lesser, 
LithotheoL, Wallerius) quote the description of tlie environs of Massel by 
Hermann, as if he there spoke of bones of birds; but that author really an- 
nounces only little hones, without saying that they may be those of birds. 
The error of com])ilers with respect to the petrified cuckoo {coiirou) of 
Zannichelli * is still greater and truly funny. He alludes to the fish 
coucou, a species of Trigla {Tricjla ciiculus, Linn.; in Italian, pesce capone), 
and not to the bird. Other reports have neither descriptions nor figures 
sufficient to justify them. Such is that of Volkman, in his ' Silesia Sub- 
terranea' (p. 141), and those brought forward by the systematic mineralo- 
gists. ... It is clear that incrustations do not belong to our subject ; and 
if the accounts of them were all true, they would prove nothing as to the 
existence of Ornithohtes." 
There remained then, after these eliminations by Cuvier, in the 
works of previous authors only the relics in certain schists, such as 
those of (Eningen, Pappenheim, and Monte Bolca, which could have 
any claims to a serious examination, and which could really have 
been taken for Ornitholites by thorough naturalists. 
" Now," says Cuvier, " nearly all that has been cited is more or less equi- 
vocal, or, at least, is not substantiated by sufficient figures and descriptions. 
These schists abound in all sorts of fish and other products of the sea ; the 
bones in them are compressed. Who would dure to flatter himself as be- 
ing able to distinguish in this state a fish-bone from a bird-bone ? The 
feathers even, are they easy to be distinguished from the Sertulariee? 
How, then, can an inconsiderable portion be judged of, such as a member? 
The best authority for an investigation of this kind undeniably should 
be that of M. Blumenbach ; but he limits himself to saying, that there 
* DargentviUe, Or. p. 333, and Walch, Com. sur Know. ii. p. 11. 
